I have never seen this bird moving on wing to a sufficient distance to enable me to speak with certainty of its mode of flight, especially as it is one of our most nocturnal species, seldom beginning to seek for prey before it is quite dusky. In the morning I have never seen one abroad at however early an hour I have been on the look-out.
The Long-eared Owl is careless as to the situation in which its young are to be reared, and generally accommodates itself with an abandoned nest of some other bird that proves of sufficient size, whether it be high or low, in the fissure of a rock or on the ground. Sometimes however it makes a nest itself, and this I found to be the case in one instance near the Juniatta River in Pennsylvania, where it was composed of green twigs with the leaflets adhering, and lined with fresh grass and sheep wool, but without feathers. The eggs are usually four, nearly equally rounded at both ends, thin-shelled, smooth, when newly deposited pure white, with a slight blush, which is no longer observable when they have been for some time sitten upon, their average length an inch and a half, their greatest breadth an inch and three-sixteenths. I found eggs of this bird on the 15th of April, and again on the 25th of June, which induces me to believe that it rears two broods in the season in the State of Pennsylvania, as it probably does also to the westward. Wilson relates the following instance of its indifference as to the place selected for its eggs. “About six or seven miles below Philadelphia, and not far from the Delaware, is a low swamp, thickly covered with trees, and inundated during great part of the year. This place is the resort of great numbers of the Qua-bird or Night Raven (Ardea Nycticorax), where they build in large companies. On the 25th of April, while wading among the dark recesses of this place, observing the habits of these birds, I discovered a Long-eared Owl, which had taken possession of one of their nests, and was sitting; on mounting to the nest, I found it contained four eggs, and breaking one of these, the young appeared almost ready to leave the shell. There were numbers of the Qua-birds’ nests on the adjoining trees all around, and one of them actually on the same tree.”
When encamped in the woods, I have frequently heard the notes of this bird at night. Its cry is prolonged and plaintive, though consisting of not more than two or three notes repeated at intervals.
Dr Richardson states that it has been found “as far north as Lat. 60°, and probably exists as high as the forests extend. It is plentiful in the woods skirting the plains of the Saskatchewan, frequents the coast of Hudson’s Bay only in the summer, and retires into the interior in the winter. It resides all the year in the United States, and perhaps is not a rare bird in any part of North America; but as it comes seldom abroad in the day, fewer specimens are obtained of it than of the other Owls. It preys chiefly on quadrupeds of the genus Arvicola, and in summer destroys many beetles. It lays three or four roundish white eggs, sometimes on the ground, at other times in the deserted nests of other birds in low bushes. Mr Hutchins says it lays in April, and that the young fly in May; and Mr Drummond found a nest on the ground in the same neighbourhood, containing three eggs, on the 5th of July, and killed both the birds. On comparing the above-mentioned eggs with those of the English Long-eared Owl, the American ones proved to be smaller, measuring only an inch and a half in length, and 1.27 inches in breadth; while the English ones measured 1.8 inch in length, and 1 1/4 in breadth. The form and colour were the same in both.”
The food of this Owl consists of rats, mice, and other small quadrupeds, as well as birds of various species; its stomach having been found by me crammed with feathers and other remains of the latter.
There is a marked difference between the sexes. The males are not only smaller than the females, but darker; and this has tempted me to consider the Strix Mexicanus of Mr Swainson and the Prince of Musignano as merely a large female of our Long-eared Owl.
Strix Otus, Linn. Syst. Nat. vol. i. p. 132.—Lath. Ind. Ornith. vol. i. p 53.—Ch. Bonaparte, Synopsis of Birds of United States, p. 37.
Long-eared Owl, Strix Otus, Wils. Amer. Ornith. vol. vi. p. 52, pl. 50, fig. 1.
Strix Otus, Long-eared Owl, Richards. and Swains. Fauna Bor.-Amer. vol. ii. p. 72.
Long-eared Owl, Nuttall, Manual, vol. i. p. 130.